


Open Flowers In The Windy Fields Of This War-Torn World

by Duck_Life



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Drinking, Episode Tag: s05e15 Power Play, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Possession, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 16:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6059026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Miles' possession, he and Keiko both have trouble coping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Flowers In The Windy Fields Of This War-Torn World

**Author's Note:**

> From Memory Alpha: Alien entities take over the minds of Data, Troi, and Miles O'Brien. ...In Ten Forward, Keiko O'Brien, Miles' wife, tries to calm her daughter, Molly, who is hungry and crying. In that moment, Troi, Data, and O'Brien enter Ten Forward and force everyone on the floor. ...they each take a hostage. Troi takes Picard, Data takes Worf, and O'Brien takes Keiko, though he agrees to her plea to leave Molly behind, and Keiko gives her to the care of another woman.

The night after the Enterprise leaves the Mab-Bu VI moon, O’Brien takes longer than usual putting his daughter down for bed, Keiko buzzing around their quarters the whole time and occasionally poking her head into Molly’s bedroom to watch them.

Miles rocks his baby in his arms and sings every lullaby he can think of and then just starts making them up, singing her songs like “All The Plants Love Mommy and Mommy Loves All the Plants” and “Chicken, Rice, Beans (What’s The Replicator Gonna Give Us?)”

“So when’s your first concert?” Keiko asks, watching him from the doorway with teasing eyes.

He grins, a little bashful. “I just wanted her to get to sleep.”

“Looks like she’s already been out for a while, Miles.” She’s right— Molly is, in fact, sound asleep.

“Well, you can never be too sure,” he says, and leans down to kiss the top of her head. “Goodnight,” he whispers to the baby, and sets her down in her crib before heading to the door. He switches off the light and follows Keiko into their living room.

“How do you feel?” she says.

Miles shrugs. “I’m a little tired, but I s’pose that’s just all the lullabies.”

“Miles,” she says, and gently she reaches up to touch the side of his face. He latches onto her wrist, keeping her there.

It’s been the worst day of his life— or, as Keiko would probably remind him with a smirk, the worst day of his life _so far_. “I’ll be fine,” he promises, because it’s less of a lie than _I’m fine_. That Ux-Mal prisoner crawled into his head like a worm and stayed there, kicked him out of his own brain and tried to steal his life. It flicked through Miles’ life memories like it was reading a pamphlet, and then that asshole picked and chose which ones to use against Keiko. “I’ll be fine.”

“We all will be,” she says, and he leans down to kiss her.

Keiko jerks her head away.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he says immediately, hands fluttering, no idea what to do.

Keiko swats away his concern. “No, _I’m_ sorry,” she insists, shaking her head like she can shake the last twenty-four hours away. “I was just… it’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

But her hand is still up against his face and he can feel her pulse racing. “It wanted to hurt you,” he remembers, feeling the anger boiling in his stomach. He remembers the way his own hands grabbed her, the way that thing in him wanted to kill her, wanted to _have_ her like a trophy. “I could feel it. I could feel it and I couldn’t stop it.” _If he couldn’t stop it, what kind of a monster does that make him?_

“It’s okay,” she says quickly, but clearly it’s not. Even now she looks frightened, like he might turn into a monster again at any moment. “Miles—”

“It, um,” he stumbles, trying to think. “I don’t have to be here. Okay? I can… I don’t have to be here right now.”

“No,” she says. “This is your home.”

“But it’s also yours,” he points out. “And… Keiko, you should feel safe in your own home.” When she doesn’t argue, he sighs and sets his shoulders. “It’s gonna get better,” he says. “It is… gonna get better, right?”

“Of course,” she swears. “It _is_ better. We’re okay.”

“It’s gonna get better,” he decides. “And I’ll be right here when it is, okay?” She’s shaking her head, crying a little, but she’s not saying no. “Until then, I’ll just… crash somewhere else. I’ll talk to the captain, figure something out.” He wants to kiss her but he stops himself, pats her lightly on the shoulder instead. “It’s gonna get better,” he promises.

She doesn’t watch him walking away. With her back to him as he’s almost out the door, she calls after him, “It better.”

Miles goes to Ten Forward instead of seeking out Picard right away because goddamn it, if he ever really needed a drink this is the time. He orders Jameson on the rocks and waits, leaning against the cold bar.

“You look like you could use a therapist.” Looking up at the voice, he finds Troi sitting at the other end of the bar. She’s abandoned her usual sweet, sugary drinks for a tumbler of neat whiskey. “Unfortunately I’m out of commission,” she adds, nodding to the drink in her hand. “But if you’d like to talk I can listen and nod sympathetically.”

Miles takes her up on it, sliding into the seat beside her. For a long moment he says nothing, just listens to the sounds of late night Ten-Forward, clinking glasses and murmured conversations. He’d spent much longer rocking Molly to sleep than he thought, and a lot of people have already headed for bed themselves.

“Kicked myself out of my own home,” he says finally. As promised, Deanna listens and nods sympathetically. “I… I don’t know. Keiko’s scared of me. But it’s… I mean, she’s _right_ to be. Right?” His drink arrives and he doesn’t touch it.

“It wasn’t you,” Deanna reminds him, sounding completely unconvinced. Just hours ago she was standing five feet away and threatening everyone in the room. She tries a different angle. “People react to trauma in different ways. It’s not uncommon for someone to mistrust or fear someone close to them even in… well, even in normal circumstances.”

“Normal circumstances,” he snorts, and he takes a sip of his drink. “Wonder what it’d be like to work on a ship where ‘normal circumstances’ ever applied.”

“Boring,” Deanna says, making a face. Then she sighs and adds, “Safe.”

They drink in silence for a long time as people drain from the lounge, the stars streaking by outside the windows. Miles wonders briefly how Data’s faring the day’s events, if he and Deanna are both staying up late and drinking whiskey like it’s water.

“I can’t look the Captain in the eye,” she confides in him at one point. “After everything I did…”

“It wasn’t you,” he says, sounding even less convincing than she did.

“It should’ve been,” she says darkly, eyes staring straight ahead. “I mean… I should have been able to take control.”

“Hey, none of us could,” he points out.

“No, you couldn’t,” Deanna sighs. “You’re human. Data’s an android. But I have experience with… with… I mean, I’m an empath. I’m different, I should have been…”

“Better?” he finishes, almost smiling. “Hate to break it to you, Counselor, but you’re just as messed up as the rest of us.” He drinks.

Miles ends up crashing on Riker’s couch that night— he finds out the hard way that the ship’s first officer snores, and loudly.

Data shows up in the arboretum the next day, waiting patiently for Keiko to finish checking on a fern before speaking. “I wanted to apologize for my actions yesterday,” he says, launching right into it.

“Hm?” she says, looking up. There’s a smudge of dirt on her face. “Oh, Data… they weren’t _your_ actions. You know that, right?”

“I am aware of the process by which the Ux-Mal prisoners took control of our bodies,” he assures her. “Yet, I do feel responsible in some part.”

“Guilt,” she supplies.

“I am an android.”

“Well, sure,” she says, rearranging some leaves so they’re more exposed to the light, “but everyone’s dealing in different way. Miles…” She stops talking for a moment, because she’s got dark circles under her eyes and she’s sleep-deprived but at the very least she can get through a conversation without crying. “It’s been hard. For both of us.”

“How?”

Bless his heart, but he’s always so blunt. “Well,” Keiko says, “I look at him and I know it’s him but I’m still seeing the thing that took him over.”

“I do not understand,” Data says. “You sound like you feel… afraid of him.”

She swallows to keep from crying. “I do, a little,” she admits. “I wish I didn’t. I hate it, but I do.”

“But,” he goes on, “you are not afraid of me.”

Keiko doesn’t hate easily, but she hates the things that did this. She hates that anyone or anything could come onboard this ship and ruin everything so thoroughly and just leave, leaving behind this mess and this pain in their wake.

“No,” she says finally, “not really. Data, have you ever heard the phrase ‘no one can hurt you as much as someone you love’?”

“I have not.”

“Well,” she sighs, and when she goes to tuck a strand of hair behind one ear she just gets more dirt on her face. “Of course I love you, Data, but it’s different, you know. Miles is my husband. I trust him more than anyone in the whole… in the whole _galaxy_. And we both had to watch him threaten me, and neither of us could do a thing about it.” She sighs. “Have you seen him today? Do you know how he’s doing?”

“I have not seen him,” Data says. “I could look—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she says, and she goes back to tending to the plants.

It’s big ship. They manage to go a whole two days without seeing each other once. And then during lunch, Keiko’s trying to wrangle her fussy daughter into eating when a familiar hand takes the spoon from her.

“May I?”

In his wrinkled uniform, Miles looks a mess, bags and dark circles under his eyes. “Of course,” she says with a weak smile, propping Molly up on her lap so he can feed her. As soon as she sees her father the baby stops crying and giggles. “I can’t believe she plays favorites,” Keiko sighs, leaning back in her chair while Miles makes warp engine sounds as he pilots the tiny spoon into Molly’s mouth.

“Oh, come on,” he says, watching his daughter eat. “I’m not her favorite.” Keiko raises an eyebrow. “Okay, I’m her favorite, but that’s only because she’s too young to know any better.” He goes for another spoonful of mashed pears and Keiko slowly tangles his free hand with hers. They don’t look at each other, like they’re worried they might scare away the sudden peace between them.

“Miss you,” she says.

“Miss you more.” It was something they used to tell each other every single day when they were dating, the brief moments between tasks and missions when she would pop her head into the transporter room or he would step into the arboretum.

“Enough to come home?” They both finally look up and meet eyes at the same time.

“I’m not coming home until you feel safe, sweetheart,” he says. For a long time they don’t move, and Molly whines to remind him to keep feeding her. “Do you feel safe?”

She squeezes his hand. “I will.”

“But you don’t right now.”

Keiko sighs. “Yes,” she says, “some _thing_ that looked like you really messed with me. And we’re going to have to live with that, and deal with that.” She’s got one hand curled tight around her baby and one squeezing her husband’s hand and it’s like she’s trying to hold her family together even as the universe tries tugging it apart. “But all I know is I can’t sleep without you.”

He grins, a little shaky. “Me neither.”

“It’s gonna get better,” she promises, and she leans forward to kiss him. Molly burbles happily watching her parents.

It only gets better from there.


End file.
